Tag: card-games

Cascade

JulianLeave a comment

My new favorite cooperative game 

My family is obsessed with a game. We call it Cascade. Here’s how it’s played: 

Setup: 

-1. Ask each player whether they’d prefer to play the simpler, more social game or the more intricate, challenging version. Each player who chooses the simpler version will receive one hand; each player who chooses the more challenging version will receive two hands. 

0. Arrange between the players four sets of tokens (we wrote ours on scraps of cardboard). Each of these sets will contain one token for each of the hands in play, and be labeled with a number and word, either “Preflop”, “Flop”, “Turn”, or “River”. (So one set of tokens is Preflop 1, Preflop 2, Preflop 3, etc.) 

  1. Deal 2 cards to the players who want to play the simpler version and 4 cards to the players who want to play the more challenging version. 
  2. Ask the players with 4 cards to split them into two separate hands, any way they desire. 

The game begins (Preflop): 

  1. All acting simultaneously, move any of the Preflop tokens from the middle of the table anywhere you desire. Your goal is to, without talking or communicating too much (no nods or “mmmhmm”s), arrange all hands in rank order (according to poker ranks), with 1 being the lowest. You may assign tokens to other players’ hands, remove tokens from other players’ hands, return tokens to the center, etc. 
  2. Once all the tokens are stable (no longer being moved), ensure all the players are settled, and move on to the flop. 

Flop, Turn, River

  1. Flip over three community cards, then repeat the same process, but with the Flop tokens instead of the Preflop tokens. 
  2. Once all the Flop tokens are stable, repeat with two additional cards and the Turn tokens. 
  3. Once the Turn tokens are stable, repeat with one final card and the River tokens. 

End

  1. Once the River tokens are stable, reveal your hands one by one, in whichever order you think will be most dramatic. How accurate were your rankings throughout? It’s cooperative: the whole table wins or whiffs together. (Each hand is the best 5 from the hole cards + community cards, just like Texas Hold’Em.) 

That’s the game! 

We originally played with one hand per person and a Flop of 3 cards, Turn of 1 card, and River of 1 card, but learned many people prefer playing with two hands, and that the game is more interesting with a turn of 2 cards rather than 1. We’ve also played the game with 3-card hands instead of 2-card hands. That version is particularly enjoyable for the game nerds among us, but really puts a damper on the chit-chat and socializing.  

Why is it called Cascade? If you play it, maybe you’ll notice 🙂 

Clown School Break Day 34: Invention via Iteration 

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero builds upon himself. 

I created a new game today. 

We started with the game I described two days ago. 

We played with three people. It wasn’t as good as with 4 or 5 people. Then we expanded so we each received two hands instead of one hand, for a total of 6 two-card hands. 

Then we gave ourselves 3 cards per hand instead of two. 

Then we gave ourselves 6 cards instead of two sets of three, which we subdivided into our own three-card hands. 

What did I learn? 

  1. Follow the fun. When it’s not fun, find new fun. 
  2. Don’t push. If it’s fun enough, stick with it. 
  3. I like chaos. Compared to my card game compatriots, I enjoyed the more intricate game. (Part of that may be my familiarity with poker — i.e. this end version was farther at the end of my comfort zone while the basic game had become trivial). 

We spent 5 hours today playing that game. Playing variations. Ending at the more intricate one. 

Also this: 

  • To get to the end we had to go though the steps. Sometimes you have to take people through the basics, not start at the end if the end is too complicated. 

Building blocks. Leveling up. 

And one more thought: 

  • In the last hand, I correctly called all three cards in two of my compatriots’ hands. One of my friends half-jokingly called me “the oracle”. 

Perhaps what other people find chaotic is just the space I exist in. Sometimes what’s trivial to you is complex to me. (My partner laughs when I refer to putting frozen food on a plate and microwaving it as “cooking”.) 

This reminds me of one of the lessons from clown school: everyone has their own challenges. What’s trivial for me may be hard for you. Jesus would say “judge not lest ye be judged”. (And after all, today is the day for celebrating his birthday.) 

I’m glad to have seen my classmates trudge through their own challenges. And I’m glad to have built up the self-comfort prior not to judge them during the process. That would be a real dick move. 

🤡